I have a certain list of features I absolutely need, as well as a price range, and I want to plug this information into some sort of online tool that will filter through a comprehensive list of cameras. The nearest thing I've been able to find is the Amazon search, but the features are often mis-tagged.

The nicest thing about Neocamera? You have pretty direct access to the man behind the data, @Itai .
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rfuscaJun 29 '12 at 18:07

Thanks! Actually I saw this question but among all the things we can search there, price is not one of them. I used to have a price feed 2 or 3 years ago but it was unreliable and quite misleading. Sometimes it would return the price of a lens cap instead of a lens, it often too had outdated prices close to the MSRP which did not reflect selling prices of older models. Guess I should try a newer feed to see if its better. In the meantime, do feel free to search for cameras and lenses there :)
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ItaiJun 29 '12 at 23:28

This is from a comparison from the Pentax K-5 and Nikon D7000. I think the numbers apply to live view, but, probably when using a DSLR, you're not using live view in situations where shutter lag is really important. Shutter lag when using the optical viewfinder is of course negligable for either camera. You might think the D7000 is unusable from the above, but of course that's silly.

That's just an example. Another one is the use of DxOMark scores in a very inflated way. The "image quality" score, is based on a DxO measurement of some technical aspects of image quality, but taken out of context that results in funny claims on snapsort like "23% better image quality". (More on DxOMark scores here.) Or, the comparison of lenses available, which is simply a count of lens models, and says nothing about how those lens lineups actually compare. In short, you can't just take a bunch of data, run it through a computer script, and come out with information.

If you do, you're not really helping people — you're misleading them.

A similar sort of bias comes out in human-produced camera review sites too: since they're driven by visits from people looking to see the differences between cameras, there's a large incentive to play up little differences. Additionally, since the serious reviews feature careful testing and charts and graphs and data, emphasis naturally is slanted towards the differences that can be easily measured and presented in that way — even if they're not the most important for an actual photographer.